My Experience During A Peyote Ceremony

I ate a mescaline cactus in Mexico and learned a beautiful life lesson

Peyote is a small cactus growing in the Northern States of Mexico, also called ‘Abuelo’ (grandfather) by the native people. It has been used in traditions for centuries by the Huichol tribe and is thought to heal many illnesses, like snake bites, wounds, skin disease, tuberculosis, diabetes, and colds, among many other ailments.

In modern ceremonial use, Peyote is a powerful natural medicine that could ‘heal’ you from your ego and to become a better person to others around you. It can teach you vital lessons about yourself and your community. It contains the active ingredient mescaline. Peyote is currently on the list of endangered plant species, and it should never be used as a recreational drug.

Ayahuasca

I first heard about Peyote during a talk with friends about ayahuasca. Abuelita (ayahuasca) has been intriguing me for a while because I felt I had internal mental questions that needed an answer that I couldn’t reach with a normal state of mind. Experiences from other people made the curiosity for ayahuasca grow more and more, but I was ‘stuck’ in Mexico because of COVID travel restrictions. And I didn’t want to take this sacred medicine to another place than where it originally grows, the Amazon. In my opinion, exporting ayahuasca all over the world makes the plant being exploited and misused and I didn’t want to contribute to that.

So when somebody told me about Mexican ayahuasca, I was convinced that I needed to try it. The only thing I needed to do was wait for the call of the Abuelo. It is believed that Hikury (the traditional name for Peyote) finds you and you shouldn’t look for it, so I wanted to honor that tradition. I had been feeling the call from Mother Earth for Ayahuasca during my meditations already, but now it was time to wait for the call from Peyote.

That call came a few months later via a WhatsApp message during a particularly hard time I was having. I had just broken up with the person who I considered to be my soulmate and was completely heartbroken and felt empty. The message showed a flyer with the invitation to a traditional Peyote Ceremony, only an hour away from where I lived. So I didn’t hesitate for a moment and signed up for the event.

The ceremony

I had to prepare a little altar for my experience. I was told to bring a white candle, some cacao, white flowers and anything I wanted to put down in my altar. I also had to eat only a light meal on the day of the ceremony, to let the Peyote do all the necessary work inside of me.

It was already dark when I arrived; the ceremony is held at night and lasts until the next morning. I had to prepare my own space by putting a blanket on the floor around the fire and install my altar in front of me. In total there were about 20 people around the fire, mostly indigenous Mexicans and about 4 foreigners. Many had pictures of family members or other personal items for their altars.

It surprised me that there were also children running around, but when I asked the Shaman about that, he replied that I should be more worried if there would not be children in ceremonies like these. He said that medicine is part of their ancestors and children are family and shouldn’t be expelled from the tradition. I wasn’t sure what to think about this as mescaline is a powerful hallucinogenic and it didn’t seem like the right thing to do for kids. But they all seemed very comfortable and happy about it, and in the end, most children went to sleep before the ceremony started. The Shaman explained that because Peyote is used to shed your ego, it doesn’t work for kids because they don’t have an ego yet.

Personally I hated the taste of the paste

The Shaman started to prepare the tea in a big pot on the fire and some people who were helping him assembled the water drum (the Grandfather) and the rattle (the Grandmother), both native instruments. Around midnight everything was ready and we were given a paste that contained the Peyote buttons and a tea that also contained Peyote. Personally, I hated the taste of the paste, it was like eating a spoonful of bitter dirt that had been underneath the ground for a while already. The tea was more doable as long as you didn’t let the stuff sink to the bottom of your cup.

After consuming the Peyote, everybody started singing native songs and playing the instruments. The drum and the rattle are passed around the circle clockwise and whoever receives them, sings a song (if you want to). Male and female voices are not mixed. It was beautiful to hear the differences between the masculine and feminine energies and the whole setting made me very aware of that. It was like listening to the soft care of the women and the strong protection of the men, together in perfect balance.

The Peyote started working very mellowly after about an hour after ingestion. At first, it made me very nauseous and gave me the sensation I had to throw up. When a guy next to me started vomiting, I was the second one in the group to ‘purge’. It is believed that when you vomit, it cleans bad energies for the whole group, so people were very grateful that I was throwing up and immediately came over to clean it and gave thanks to my vomit, which was kind of weird but felt very caring.

I couldn’t really distinguish the time between being sober and being high, it all happened very gradually. At some point, everything started to become very beautiful and the singing sounded angelic, like voices from another dimension. Everybody in the circle seemed incredible pretty in the light of the fire and I felt a lot of love for everyone. A big theme for me during the whole ceremony was the love for ‘family’; there was a young couple with a baby in their lap and it just seemed like the most beautiful perception of love to me. I never wanted to have children, but the ceremony made me see how incredible it is to create human life with two people that love each other unconditionally. The father lovingly took care of his wife and the mother held the baby in such a loving embrace and sang the most beautiful songs. It was the perfect image for me and the word ‘family’ changed my own family values in that moment.

Lessons learned

I actually expected it to be a more introspective journey, a way, inside your mind to tell you where you need healing. But my experience was all about the group setting, the community. You had to set an intention or ask a question before the ceremony started, and mine was the question of why I had so much trouble showing people my deepest emotions. I had been dealing with a lack of showing my emotions since childhood already and I felt that it started to take over a big part of my life and friendships. I could never fully laugh or cry with other people around me and I wanted Abuelo to tell me where it originated and how I could heal it. But despite thinking a lot about my intention, I didn’t get any clear answers.

I felt like I was growing roots out of my feet

Instead, I felt like I was ‘home’, that these people and the Universe would take care of me no matter what happened. I left the circle at some point to go to the toilet and that night happened to have a meteor shower, which was an incredible surrealistic experience. I felt like I was growing roots out of my feet while the Universe and the stars were going ballistic in the night sky. I felt an incredible love for the Earth and the sky and for this amazing world where we all try to live and love.

I also made me feel that as a European, we lost so much track of our ancestors and I was ashamed that we even didn’t have these natural traditions at all anymore. I felt like I was less human than these indigenous people that stood so close to nature and that my heart wasn’t pure because of that. They say that Peyote is supposed to heal you from your ego, but I had a constant sensation my ego was still a very big part of me. That was the message I kept getting from Abuelo: I still had a lot of inner work to do to shed my ego, which was kind of confronting because I thought I had come a long way to step away from my ego already.

I kept asking my initial question and how I was supposed to shed my ego, but all I got was the message to ‘stop looking for answers in external things’. So when the Shaman came with a second and third round of Peyote paste and tea, I gratefully said no, because Abuelo told me so (and probably also a bit because thinking about the taste of it made me instantly nauseous again).

I realised Peyote made me see the people for who they really are

When the sun started rising, I was reborn. I have never felt só part of a group or community and an immense amount of empathy for everybody entered my mind. Some people were still taking the Peyote in the morning and sending prayers and thanks to the fire. What kind of overwhelmed me was that most people were actually not that pretty (as in pretty by society standards), but during the night they seemed like pure creations of art to me. I realised Peyote made me see the people for who they really are and not because of the way they look from the outside, which was another powerful message.

At about 9 am the ceremony started to come to a close. The Shaman came around to bless everybody and most people publicly spoke about their intention and how Abuelo started to heal them. I just mentioned how grateful I was for being part of such a sacred ritual and that it showed me that we are all part of some sort of family or community. We all gave thanks to the fire and the instruments for being part of our ceremony and opened the water drum to release the spirits.

Closing the experience

People were still pretty high when we had our conversations with each other afterwards. One thing that surprised me was that the son of the Shaman (who was learning to be a Shaman) told me that ‘emotions are like water’. Once it stops flowing, they become rotten and deprived of life. It was like he knew my intention. That particular sentence actually almost made me burst into tears on the spot, but despite wanting to cry, I still couldn’t.

Overall, the experience didn’t give me clear answers to my initial question of why I couldn’t show my emotions and I think I need a lot more to learn to actually ‘shed my ego’. But I got a beautiful message that we are all one in this world and all looking for love. We should all take care of each other and feminine and masculine energies should work together and not against each other. We shouldn’t try to aim to be the same, it’s beautiful to be a man and embrace your masculinity to help your community and to be female with sacred feminine energies that can heal and help others.

And never forget the wisdom of our ancestors and the power of nature and respect for sacred traditions!

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